The Big Bang was not an explosion, Larry explained. It was a slow, cold expansion.
The card had arrived last week — a postcard of three dancing figures by Matisse. Emily brought it to her mother, who was sitting as usual on the balcony admiring the garden. ‘It’s from Javine,’ Beth said, turning it over. ‘She’s coming to stay for three days. Do you remember Javine, Milly?’
Emily thought. ‘No. Yeah.’ She made a face.
In the garden by the olive grove, sunlight on grey stones. Emily, hiding in the long grass, spied on her mother through the wire fence. Beth held Marie by the hand. And she said, ‘Marie, pick those ones. They’re fresh. No, those ones have had it.’ (The petals overgrown and limp.) ‘Chuck them away. They’re going to go brown.’
Funny little Marie, with her blonde hair. She threw the dead flowers in the air and watched them scatter. Petals stuck to her hands.
Perhaps the universe was like a flower. Starting from a bud, losing its tightness as it spread outwards. Would it wither and die? Emily went to Larry, who turned the pages of his book with one finger. He sighed importantly.
‘When the universe is ready it will start to shrink again, back down to the first pinpoint.’
‘How do you know?’ she asked.
‘I just do.’
‘How will it know when it’s ready?’
Was the universe like a balloon, blowing up, deflating? Was it like lungs?
‘Go away,’ Larry said, propped in bed with a stomach bug, his head in a book. He burped horribly, to make her leave. The sun made a dancing white star on his bed cover.
Emily slouched down to Madame Olivier, who let her feed the two elderly sausage dogs that lolled on grimy cushions in her kitchen. Madame Olivier gave Emily greasy snacks that did strange things to her stomach.
‘I’ll have to start boiling the drinking water,’ Beth said.
In the flat Emily had her own bedroom with a window that looked over the olive grove. She sat on a table on the balcony, playing ludo against herself. Beside the building the path ran down the slope, through a tunnel under the railway line to the harbour. The waterfront was beautiful; it ran along the bottom of the Old Town and around the shore towards Monte Carlo. The town lay in the curve of the coast, its orange buildings and tiled roofs rising up the slopes of the steep hills. In the marina were lines of boats — launches and yachts, their tall masts clinking and jinking. The sea was blue and sparkling with a milky haze on the horizon, the beaches were sheltered by stone breakwaters, and along the seafront the palm trees whispered and clattered in the breeze. Behind the town rose the grey mountains and, way up high, were the twin tunnels of the autoroute that ran through the ranges into Italy. In the winding lanes of the Old Town the houses were ancient and crooked; the paths between the houses ran steeply up the hill to the graveyard; in the dead hours of the siesta, under washing strung on lines beneath the buildings, there was shade, silence, sometimes the strong waft of primitive drains. Emily and Larry walked to the graveyard and watched the funerals; in the bright air under the cypresses the tiny black-clad widows, their absorbed, inward faces.
They lived in a large, ornate white block of flats. There was a white gravelled courtyard and a grand front entrance. In the mornings the courtyard blazed with colour: bright flowerbeds, palms, rock gardens sprouting with spiky cacti. On one side of the building was the path that led to the school, a large old house with green shutters and bullet holes in the walls. There were two classrooms — one for Emily’s class, one for Larry’s. The playground was a shaded circle of concrete with a tree in the middle. The toilets were in a wooden outbuilding — little cubicles with a round hole in the concrete and two footprints to stand on, on either side.
Beth sent Emily to school in new clothes, a skirt and a matching tartan jacket. Emily was furious. She hated skirts; she hated anything that matched. The girls in the playground asked, ‘Tu veux jouer?’ She nodded but dropped out at first, unable to understand the rules. There were red beetles in the stone walls. After school Emily collected some and stuck them alive to a piece of cardboard. They waved their legs, drowning in the white glue. Ashamed, she hid the murdered beetles down the side of her bed.
That night there was thunder, and in the morning, in the tunnel under the railway line, she and Beth and Marie came upon a gulping mass of toads. All morning in the classroom Emily wanted to go to the toilet but was too embarrassed to ask. Instead she drummed her feet on the floor, tap tap tap. The teacher told her to stop the racket. ‘Pas bon point,’ she frowned. If you earned enough bons points you got a prize, usually a pretty little card, une belle image.
That week, let out the gate early, Emily turned to go home, thinking it was lunchtime. But the teachers laughed and pulled her back, and led the children down the path to a bus. They drove to a medical centre and were stripped to their underwear. They stood in a line and were pushed forward, one by one. A doctor poked a cold metal stick in Emily’s ears. He covered her eyes one at a time and asked her what she could see on a coloured chart. She knew the French words for all the pictures, but wouldn’t say.
‘How old are you?’
She whispered, ‘J’ai cinq ans.’
The doctor splayed his fingers. ‘Yes. You are fife. Good girl.’ He laughed kindly, reached out his finger and pinged the elastic on her underpants. She backed away. She felt what he had done was terribly wrong.
They rode back on the bus, and this time she was allowed to go home for lunch. But in the afternoon she was caught scribbling in pen on her hand. The teacher grabbed her blue and red paw and held it up to the class. ‘Pas. Bon. Point.’
That evening she fished up the cardboard card from the side of the bed. The red beetles had turned brown. There was a faint smell. She pushed the card back down. Next time she went to look the card had gone. No one said anything about her crime.
Larry went on being sick. He refused to get up.
‘Perhaps it’s culture shock,’ Beth said. She boiled water and set pans of it on the bench to cool. She told Emily to drink from the pans only, not from the tap. Emily drank from the tap anyway, when no one was looking.
Larry lay reading, or staring at the ceiling. Beth called Per into his room, ‘Look at this.’ She held up Larry’s hand. The skin on it had begun to peel.
‘How weird,’ Per said, perplexed.
‘I’ll have to get a doctor,’ Beth said.
The doctor came, breathing fumes of garlic and wine. ‘A virus,’ he said.
‘And the peeling hands?’
‘A side effect. Give him fresh air.’ The doctor sniff ed. ‘Try boiling the drinking water, Madame.’
Per came home for lunch. Emily got a great surprise when she saw him. His front tooth was missing. He’d bitten a piece of French bread and felt a jolt (‘like being socked in the jaw’) and when he’d looked down his false front tooth was stuck in the sandwich.
Emily stared at the new Per. Last winter Larry had read a book about androids. Emily had got an idea fixed in her mind: perhaps Per was a robot. She had watched him for signs. Was he real? How could you tell? In France Per had grown his hair and beard long. Now, with his wild hair and missing tooth, he looked like a pirate. Perhaps he was a criminal, with a band of men.
Madame Olivier was scandalised — a missing tooth, tiens. For her, the beard and long hair were shocking enough.
Emily fed a piece of salami to the elder sausage dog, Agnes. She said to Madame Olivier, ‘My father has a gun.’
‘A gun?’
‘A pistol,’ Emily said. ‘This long.’ She held out two hands.
‘Get away,’ Madame Olivier said calmly.
There was a football field below the olive grove where local games were held. When there was an important match a line of policemen was stationed in the olive grove to stop people watching the match for free.
On a hot, still day Emily listened to the crowd singing: Allez Menton, Allez Menton, A-Allez. Hunting alone for lizards, she came to the line o
f police. She spied on them from behind a tree until one of them saw her and nudged the others. They glanced, shrugged and turned away. They were watching the match. The one who had seen her beckoned. Emily held her hands cupped in front of her. The policeman ambled through the grass and asked what she had in her hands. He was young, with a smooth brown face and black hair. He had a tiny chip out of his front tooth. His cap was shiny, his uniform exact and neat. Slowly she opened her fingers and showed him the grey lizard, motionless in her palm, its throat throbbing. In a quick convulsion of its whole body it rushed up Emily’s arm, fell off her elbow and disappeared into the long grass.
The policeman turned his mouth down in a sad face, like a clown. He parted the grass with a stick, trying to find it.
‘No, it’s gone,’ she said. Then she saw it. She pounced, and picked it up, but the tail dropped off and lay, wiggling horribly, near Emily’s foot. The policeman made an expression of disgust. Together they leaned down, peering. Emily got it between her finger and thumb and the young man made such a face they both laughed.
On the bank the policemen raised their arms and shouted. Goal! His superior called roughly, telling him get back. The young policeman clicked his tongue, threw the stick into the brush and jogged away, turning once to smile over his shoulder. She could hear him being lazily told off.
She roamed through the sun-striped grass, savagely thinking. She liked the policeman a lot. The grass was dry and brown, the paths were dusty. Everything was still in the midday heat. The sky was blue patterns through the lattice of branches, and the leaves had that graceful, grey, feathery sheen that made the light in the olive grove so dreamy and soft. A wizened grandfather and grandmother took turns to wheel a pram up and down under the trees. The baby thinly wailing under its cover. They leaned close and made cooing, clucking sounds.
Po po po, said the old man.
Emily drifted near to the wire fence. Madame Olivier’s dogs set up a yapping in the basement. The old woman cursed them and banged her shutters. A train rumbled by.
And in the garden, Beth was calling, ‘Marie, Marie.’
Javine wandered out onto the balcony and stood running her hands through her yellow hair. Her breasts bulged over the front of her tight top. Her neck had three little bulges of fat, like rings, on which her gold jewellery rested.
Marie pointed up at her. Javine waved her pretty coloured scarf. ‘Hello down there.’
Javine had brought wine for lunch. It was too hot to eat on the terrace. They sat at the wooden table inside, in the shade. Javine leaned back and put a cigarette to her red lips; Per started forward and lit it. She blew out a long grey stream of smoke.
‘I am working in London. These last four months all alone. No friends, no family. But that is the way to work. I am working on a new idea. Something crazy, something to catch you by the breath.’
Per stared out the window. A blush had spread over Javine’s throat. ‘This light,’ she said fiercely, pointing to the terrace, where the spiky cacti stood in their pots, cutting green shapes out of the sky. ‘This Mediterranean glow. It is incomparable. These blues and greens. These oranges. These reds and blues and …’ She shook her head and smiled simply. No, it was impossible. Words failed her.
‘Yellows?’ Beth frowned.
A flash of laughter across Per’s face.
Javine tossed her head. ‘These turquoises. Especially so. I know that you,’ she leaned towards Per, ‘are sensitive yourself to these sub-tleties, these storms and changes of light. You bring them to your work in a way that is …’ She crinkled her eyes as if she were tasting something delicious. ‘It is genius,’ she whispered.
Per cleared his throat. ‘No no,’ he said with a laugh — he felt suddenly clogged, drowsy. He traced a pattern on the table with his forefinger.
Beth smiled strangely. Javine looked at her without expression. She tapped her fingers on the table and breathed in through her nose. ‘I must see where you work, Per Svensson,’ she demanded. ‘Your lair, away from the noise and bustle. Your fictory of ideas.’
‘Sure,’ Per said, glancing at Beth. ‘It’s not far away,’ he said. He started to clear the table. Below the window the gardener cleared his throat and hoiked. Madame Olivier shouted at him. The dogs yipped and yapped.
Emily, on her best behaviour, went to get her colouring-in book. She had been working on a page of geometric shapes, making a complicated pattern. It had taken her hours; her felt pens were nearly dry.
Javine leaned over. ‘Ah, what are you doing with these little shapes?’
‘Colouring in.’
‘But why do you not draw your own pictures? Why do you colour these little diamonds and triangles? You could make your own pictures, express yourself, see?’ She turned to Beth, ‘All children are natural artists. But we force them into these little boxes, into other people’s black lines. To stifle the creativity.’ She crushed her hands together, mangling something between them. Beth and Emily saw creativity slide out like a squashed beetle and fall to the floor.
‘We’re not very good at drawing in this family,’ Beth said.
‘But this is the mistake. Everyone can draw; true expression, it is the thing we must find.’
Beth half-closed her eyes. Her shoulders drooped. But she rallied, ‘Shall we go for a swim?’ and left the room to gather up the bathing suits and towels, and to check on Larry. She peeped in and saw him reading a book on geology, the windows open and the palm tree waving against the bright sky. ‘Should we make him get up?’ Per had wondered, but Beth was against it. She understood him. She might have done the same if she could. To read in the sunny quiet — what luxury. To escape from this ravening Javine.
In the sitting room — bright silence. Javine smiled at Per, her head on one side, as if they could both hear, but only just, some beautiful, distant music …
Emily stolidly coloured in: a diamond, a triangle.
On the table in front of her, the solid metal petanque ball Per used as a paperweight was struck by the sun, making a little dazzle of silver light. Emily put her hand on top of it. The curve of cold steel. She rolled it, until it was at the edge of the table. It was heavy.
Javine swished close, trailing her scarves. Resting her hand on the table she crooned, ‘Give me your pen. I will show you how to draw a cat. A pretty little pussycat.’
Emily handed her a pencil. Javine began to draw in quick, clever strokes. ‘We make our own picture, see. Not other people’s lines.’
Silence. The scratch of the pencil. Emily gave the ball a tiny push. Down plunged the heavy object — thud.
Javine gasped. She screamed. Emily shrank down quick-small in her chair, clenching her fists. Javine crumpled, making a strange sound: grrrrnnnnnn.
Beth rushed in. She and Per knelt over Javine, who was hunched on the floor, gripping the damaged foot in both hands.
‘What happened? The boulle ball? Do you think she’s broken? I mean …’
And Per, hovering, trying to be helpful: ‘Could you hop to the couch?’
‘’Op?’ Javine almost shouted. ‘Oooooh.’
They pulled off her pretty sandal. Emily looked over the edge of the table at the damaged foot. It was a weird shape. The square, blunt toes had little hairs on the knuckles. It was a fascinatingly ugly sight. Already it was swelling, the circular bruise growing dark.
Per helped Javine over to the couch. Beth hurried to find some ice.
Emily looked at the cat Javine had drawn. He was walking along a fence, the line of his body just right as he balanced himself, placing one careful paw in front of the other. It was clever, Emily thought, to get the sense of him just keeping himself from falling. But there was a hole gouged in his head and at the tip of his nose lay a broken pencil lead. The pencil line veered away from the hole, across the page. The cat had been shot in the head; the pencil lead was the tiny bullet.
Emily drifted near to the couch, holding the drawing. ‘I’ll colour him in,’ she offered, far too casually.
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But no one was listening.
‘Right,’ Per said, ‘It’s time you got up.’ And he banged the shutters.
Larry poked his legs over the side of the bed. He was so thin. But Per had been skinny all his life. In fact, when he’d reached twelve stone, he’d joked to Beth that he’d finally Achieved Fatness.
Larry peered up at his father through round spectacles. He had buck teeth, tiny vulnerable shins, small tentative hands.
Per hardened his heart. ‘Fresh air. That’s what you need.’
Larry drooped about, languidly picking up clothes. ‘Use both hands,’ Per said. And as the shirt slipped out of Larry’s grasp, ‘Get a hold of it. Hang onto it, can’t you. Use your fingers.’ Per hustled him into his sandals and marched him out. ‘Right. Where’s Milly? Milly.’
Javine lay on the couch, her foot wrapped in a flannel and resting high on a cushion. She shot a plume of grey smoke into the air and tapped the cigarette on the side of the ashtray. Per saw himself wheeling the couch to the edge of the terrace and tipping her off into the rock garden. But she’d been very good about the accident, very forgiving. And she was rather fetching, lying there; she looked — he searched for the right word — rather beautifully palpable.
Larry had slipped away from him. But not back to bed — he emerged from his room with a notebook and pen. He looked fresher already, resolute. Per cheered up. ‘Go out and play,’ he said. He looked at Larry’s thin shoulders and felt a rush of love for his poor, sensitive boy.
He watched from the terrace. The children opened the gate and went out onto the path. Larry was explaining something. He paused, showing Emily his notebook. She looked up at Per. Her face was a mask.
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